Desrtopa comments on Configurations and Amplitude - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 April 2008 07:41AM

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Comment author: Desrtopa 14 April 2012 02:15:50PM 5 points [-]

Depends how far apart you space them. In a black hole, you could crunch up all the particles in existence into the same space, and you still wouldn't be any closer to spanning the length of an inch.

We might not be able to visualize this, but our brains developed to help us operate on a scale where things actually do behave as if they were all made of substantial lumps of stuff which take up space and two things can't be in the same space because the space is filled. That's the sort of thing our brains evolved to deal with, so whether or not reality really works like that at the most fundamental level, we should expect ourselves to be bad at envisioning things that don't work like that. For a rather long time, scientists thought that reality was like that all the way down. But then when we developed the technology to do experiments which actually probe what's going on at that level, we started finding that reality simply doesn't work that way. You can try and envision matter as being made of tiny little lumps of stuff bopping around, but if you do, you will unavoidably end up drawing conclusions that contradict what we find is actually going on.

"I can't get a picture of this in my head" is not a rebuttal of a physical theory, because there's no reason that our heads must actually be equipped to create pictures of how the fundamental level of reality works.

Comment author: Monkeymind comment score below threshold [+] (21 children)

Comment author: Desrtopa 14 April 2012 03:21:24PM 1 point [-]

Just because we can't visualize something doesn't mean we can't work out the rules. If quantum mechanical models accurately describe what's happening, the fact that we can't picture it in our heads is not a problem.

I would be a lot more willing to help you understand if I didn't think you're being obtuse on purpose though.

Comment author: Monkeymind comment score below threshold [+] (9 children)

Comment author: Desrtopa 14 April 2012 04:26:18PM 3 points [-]

Well, I agree that there are things about the scientific process that could be done better, and I think most of the other people here would also, but I expect we disagree about the specifics. Can you tell me what you think ought to be done differently and why you think it would work better?

Comment author: Monkeymind comment score below threshold [+] (5 children)

Comment author: Desrtopa 14 April 2012 11:54:45PM 2 points [-]

That's an extremely unclear explanation.

I think it would be easier to understand if you were to frame it in terms of specific examples. Supposing you want to find something out, how would you expect a scientist to do it, and how would you do it differently? Try using an example with a specific question, like "what makes it rain?" or, if you want to exercise some more creativity, something that we can't easily look up the answers to, like "if you put someone in a position of power, do they really become more inclined to take advantage of people, or is it just a difference of opportunity?"

At this point, I don't think we can work through this article without hashing out our differences about the scientific method. There's too much of a gap of inferential distance (and please actually read that post I'm linking to, I'm not just putting it there for thematic appropriateness.)

Comment author: Monkeymind comment score below threshold [+] (3 children)

Comment author: Desrtopa 15 April 2012 03:20:18PM * 2 points [-]

This makes good sense and is the very reason why it is crucial to define ones KEY TERMS in the hypothesis stage. It is why I press for precise definitions, only to be told I do not understand or I am being obtuse, etc. I have been told that scientists use precise terms, but wave, particle, energy are anything but. It seems that they are having difficulty telling the difference between nouns and verbs as has already been discussed. Let us stick with WAVE for now:

Give me EY's definition of wave (as pertains to this article). I gave mine earlier and was told it was not the scientific one as relating to the particle/wave duality. If wave is a disturbance through a medium, then wave is not an it but a what. This whole wave/particle paradox might have been avoided had someone defined the terms waaaay back then.

Scientists did define their terms way back then. They never introduced the idea of a wave/particle duality without knowing exactly what they meant.

The reason I keep diverting from the topic is that it takes more than just defining one's terms to communicate complex ideas without a shared body of information. Try and explain evolution to a person who's been brought up in a fundamentalist household, for instance, and while you might pat yourself on the back afterwards for an explanation well delivered, they're probably not going to come away understanding it, unless you take the time to bridge the entire gap of uncomprehension.

I seriously suggest reading the Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions sequence, which I linked to before, because some of the points you're expressing are misconceptions that it was written for the specific purpose of addressing. Eliezer wrote the sequence in order to bring people up to the point of being able to meaningfully discuss the ideas we work with here without talking past each other. He put a lot of work into them, and I'd rather not replicate it all when it's already there for exactly that reason. There is a reason that Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions is the first in the suggested reading order of the sequences, and the quantum physics sequence is the fifth.

Comment author: Monkeymind 15 April 2012 04:55:33PM * -1 points [-]

continue this thread »

Comment author: Incorrect 14 April 2012 04:44:58PM -1 points [-]

While there are plenty of issues affecting reproducibility of scientific results, physics is much better in this area than other sciences having stricter requirements to establish statistical significance.

Comment author: David_Gerard 14 April 2012 06:03:28PM 0 points [-]

What wrong answers do you see it giving?

Comment author: Amanojack 08 May 2012 06:06:50PM 1 point [-]

If quantum mechanical models accurately describe what's happening, the fact that we can't picture it in our heads is not a problem.

I think there's a danger of equivocating here on the words "what's happening." In other words, which "what's happening" do the QM models describe?

I'll elaborate. If we observe X, do the QM models describe X, or do they describe the (so far unobserved) phenomena that may underly X?

If the mathematical QM model merely describes X, it's hard to see how it is anything other than a very succinct cataloging of the observations, put in a very useful form. That's quite an achievement, but I can understand the hesitation with calling it an explanation or a theory.
If the QM model actually describes some as-yet unobserved phenomena that is proposed to underly X, then it seems like it avoids Monkeymind's criticisms because there is actually something additional being posited to be happening, behind the scenes as it were.

If it is the latter, I'd be interested in seeing an example (anything in QM).

Comment author: TimS 08 May 2012 07:14:52PM 0 points [-]

If QM were false, computer circuits would not work.

Comment author: dlthomas 08 May 2012 07:18:20PM 1 point [-]

That depends how false, and in what ways.

Comment author: TimS 08 May 2012 07:20:17PM * 0 points [-]

Yes, but I'm a lawyer and lack the background to give a more specific example. All I'm trying to say is that disbelieving QM does have practical, real-world consequences.

Comment author: Desrtopa 09 May 2012 08:51:22PM * 0 points [-]

If the QM model actually describes some as-yet unobserved phenomena that is proposed to underly X, then it seems like it avoids Monkeymind's criticisms because there is actually something additional being posited to be happening, behind the scenes as it were.

There are probably more examples than I'm aware of, but as I pointed out in an earlier comment to Monkeymind, quantum entanglement, which was regarded as an extremely counterintuitive prediction, was predicted by quantum mechanical models well in advance of observation.

ETA: Bose-Einstein condensates also come to mind.

Comment author: SusanBrennan 14 April 2012 05:27:17PM * 2 points [-]

I can't explain QM very well, but here's a video of "someone that can". I would recommend paying special attention to the speech he gives around 37:00 minutes in about concepts like "wave" and "particle", which we have coined in the macroscopic world and how we should not really apply terms which have mutually exclusive qualities in the macroscopic world to describe the world of fundamental particles.

His answers might still be unsatisfactory to you, but its the best I can offer.

Comment author: Monkeymind comment score below threshold [+] (3 children)

Comment author: Amanojack 08 May 2012 05:48:12PM 0 points [-]

"I can't get a picture of this in my head" is not a rebuttal of a physical theory, because there's no reason that our heads must actually be equipped to create pictures of how the fundamental level of reality works.

Agreed, the basic structure of reality may be unvisualizable and otherwise incomprehensible to us. However, a theory is ostensibly a physical explanation, not merely a mathematical summary of the observed data. Reading over Monkeymind's posts, it seems the point he is making is that these theories sort of seem to "feel like" physical explanations, but in the end are "just math."

The question naturally arises, to the newbie at least, of what the difference really is between a mathematical summary of the data we've collected and a mathematical theory of how (by what mechanism) a physical phenomenon occurs.

Desrtopa comments on Configurations and Amplitude - Less Wrong

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